Did you happen to notice the full moon Friday and Saturday nights.  That full moon has for centuries determined the date of Easter.  Our Lord rose from the dead on the first Sunday after the first full moon after the vernal equinox.  Our spring equinox is on March 20 or 21 of each year.  It is the day when both night and day are nearly equal in length.  Easter changes every year because the first Sunday after the first full moon after March 20 always changes.  That Sunday nearly 2000 years ago was the day our Lord resurrected from the dead.

The second appearance of Christ is on the not too distant horizon.  Christ was crucified in the spring of the year 33 A.D.  In the year 2033, two millennia will have passed since the death and resurrection of our Lord.  Christ’s reappearance will occur not on the anniversary of his birth but on the anniversary of his resurrection.  Christ, John and Paul predicted the storms and wars and deterioration that humanity will undergo before the Second Coming.  The anti-christ has appeared- radical Islam.   Iran will produce nuclear weapons and begin Armageddon.  The Second Coming of Christ will happen in 18 years. . Prepare for the coming onslaught.

After the death of Adam, sin reigned.  Between Noah and Moses it proliferated.  God gave Moses the law, but the law only showed man that man was bad because he continued to break the law.  God’s attempt at justifying us by the law failed because no one was righteous except Abraham.  Humans could not shed this badness because sin still reigned with the law.  Since the death of Christ, we are no longer justified by the law of the prophets but by the obedience of Christ.  We were once slaves to sin, because the law was given to be broken; now we are justified by the grace that God bestows through faith in Christ.  Now we must become slaves of doing right, not sin.  With God’s grace of the Holy Spirit, we can do right all the time and the reward for doing right is sanctification and eternal life.  We must now live in the Spirit of Christ, not the letter of the law. Sin dished out by the evil one is at war within us against the Spirit of God within us by faith.  Your natural self lives in this earthly existence with worldly pursuits but your spiritual self lives in heaven with the protection of the Holy Spirit issued by God and Christ.  Who do you let control your life, thoughts and actions: the Spirit of God that wants to come in and invade your soul or the evil gained from original sin, a sin that you perpetuate or continue?  If you live and think like nature with these earthly desires, you will continue a life of death and destruction; live with the Spirit of Christ in control of your natural, animalistic desires and you will live the life God calls you to live.  Nature’s laws are at war with God’s wisdom only because we participate in it and let it fester; spiritual wisdom is a gift and produces peace with God, a peace that sustains you in God’s natural world.  You must live by the power of the Holy Spirit that can reside in you.  That Spirit is a gift from Christ and God.  Nature no longer has a claim on you, only if you let the Holy Spirit in.  One caveat:  if we live in the Spirit of Christ, we must also share in the sufferings He experienced on the cross.    We must overcome our yokes and serve others so they can overcome their yokes. (Yokes: covetness, pride, adultery, love of money, porn, etc.)  Thus we wait in hope of salvation battling against ourselves and the pursuits of the animalistic, natural world in which we currently live.  This salvation is now offered to all Gentiles, not just the Jews, God’s elect.

When Jesus Christ appeared on earth, God was present in human form.  Emmanuel literally means “God with us.”  Let’s look at the three natures of God:  Father, Son and Holy Spirit.  The Greeks and Romans attempted to define God in three natures because they regarded a son as an extension of his father.  But that definition may create confusion.  Another way to define God would be to compare Him to the United States government.  The U.S. government is divided into three branches, the executive, the legislative and the judicial.  But the United States does not have three forms of government, but one single government in three branches.  God is not three distinct persons.  What God did 2000 years ago was send a part of himself into the world at the conception of Mary.  He grew himself in her womb into human form.  God did this through the power of the Holy Spirit, which is also part of God.  The Holy Spirit is the soul of God the Father and God the Son.  And the Trinity existed from the beginning of time.  The three forms of God that emerged 2000 years ago all came from a single God who existed from eternity.  The three forms are all one and the same God.

Who, then, do Catholics receive at Mass?  They receive God.  And how do they receive God?  In the form of the Son.  And how is bread and wine transformed into God?  Through the power of the Holy Spirit.  Just as God created himself by his spoken word with the aid of the Spirit to fashion Christ in the womb of Mary, so a priest is given authority from God to call down the Holy Spirit to change ordinary, unleavened bread and ordinary wine into the body and blood of Christ.  This happens with the prayer of the Epiklesis:  "thou, the God who lacks nothing, being pleased with our Offerings for the honour of Christ, and sending down Thy Holy Spirit on this sacrifice, the witness of the Passion of the Lord Jesus, to manifest (opos apophene) this bread as the Body of Christ and this chalice as the Blood of Christ..." Transubstantiation is a wonderful gift from God to mankind. The Holy Spirit literally transforms bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ.  Do not receive this gift without due consideration of its origin.  A casual participation in Mass is worthless to you and God.  This transubstantiation only becomes complete when the recipient believes just as the priest believes.  Participate with faith, hope and charity in this mystery God has offered us.

The Charismatic Renewal in the Catholic Church concentrates on the gifts of the Holy Spirit.  St. Paul gives a list of charisms in 1 Cor 12. They include ordinary charisms like teaching and administration and extraordinary ones like healing, miracles, and tongues.  The Spirit and its gifts are not that unlike the Grace of God, an unmerited favor from God.  One must receive the Grace of God before he receives the gifts of the Spirit.  The Apostles had the charisms of healing and miracles just as Christ did.  The charisms are gifts of the Holy Spirit, the third part of the Trinity.  The Holy Spirit is the part of God that still resides with us today.  The Son and the Father reside in Heaven.  The Spirit is the medium that transcends both worlds and can enliven your soul.  Do you know that the Holy Spirit is present in every Mass?  How do you think the priest causes bread and wine to change into the body and blood of Christ? Transubstantiation!  It is not by any particular power the Priest possesses. The priest calls upon the aid of the Holy Spirit.  The Priest says “by the power of the Holy Spirit” this ordinary bread and wine is changed into the body and blood of Christ.  The Priest calls upon the Holy Spirit to make the change.  A man does not have the Charism of “miracles” unless the Holy Spirit is involved.  Not even the Pope can cure a boy with downs syndrome.  I am afraid that many Catholics do not receive the body and blood of Christ because many Priests do not have sufficient belief in the Holy Spirit to cause the change to take place.  Remember what Jesus said, that if you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you can move mountains.  Well I say that if you have the faith of the size of mountains, you can heal the sick and change ordinary bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ, but only with the aid of the Spirit. A Priest, as a disciple and minister of Christ, can have that power, but only if that power is sought through Christ and delivered by the Spirit through a determined faith in God.

I was reading an article about tweets, you know the social media phenomenon, and about how it ruins people’s lives.  The story was how tweets or statements, although not necessarily intended to be harmful by the person who said them, is taken that way and the orator or author is seen as a racist, or bigot or anti feminist or any of a number of badges of dishonor by others.  The damage starts when these “others” feel that they have the moral responsibility and ethical aptitude to judge and destroy the tweeter. Someone tweets something which may be offensive to others, often as a joke, and the person who tweeted the message often gets “shamed.”  Some type of justified revenge is taken out on this person, often for no reason other than to prop up the righteous, superior feeling of the “shamers” and to justify their own moral inferiority.  Yes some people may deserve the shame they receive and the hurt and sorrow that may follow as a badge they wear around their neck.  I can only hope and pray that these “shamed” experience the wonder and awe of God in those moments of depression and humiliation because that is the only tweeter that can rescue you.  Judgment is for God alone.  He judges you and me and He alone can heal you or punish you.  As for the indignant, morally superior, you will get your just reward.  Judge not lest you be judged.

The Muslim countries of the Middle East are shedding their Kings just as the European counties did some 200 years ago. Examples are Libya, Egypt, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Afghanistan, and Yemen.  The remainder of the Islamic Middle Eastern countries will soon follow – Saudi Arabia, Iran, Turkey, UAE, Oman, Jordan and Pakistan.   And wars are involved just like 200 years ago.   Examples are the French and American Revolutions (We are still waiting on Great Britain).  The only difference is that we did not have religious extremists as we do today.  Or did we?  I seem to remember reading of the Protestant Reformation wherein Protestants in Germany killed Christians and burned their churches and Catholics in France killed and tortured Protestants and ran the Huguenots out of the country.  Two hundred years ago these Christian revolutionaries sought political and religious freedoms and born the idea of separation of church and state.  Today, Islamic terrorist are seeking these same religious and political freedoms but are living under a middle-age crusade mentality under a religion which praises and glamorizes jihad.  And this religious extremism for a Muslim causes the church to become the state.  There is no separation of church and state for a Muslim.  The rules of the church govern political freedoms for a Muslim.  These Muslim terrorists seek to impose Islamic law on all of their countrymen regardless of the individual political and religious rights their countrymen may hold under God’s laws.

The solution is simple – a united state of Arabia.  All of these Muslim states should form a new political entity similar to the European Union or the United States of America.  But that will never happen.  The level-headed Muslims will never rise up and demand that Islam does not require jihad.  The moderate Muslim community will just sit back and let these terrorists conquer in the name of Mohammed and Allah and destroy all of the region’s opportunities for religious and political freedoms.  Once Obama is out of office, the Christian world will unite to eliminate this scourge that the devil has unleased.  Until then, innocent people, both Muslim and Christian, will have to suffer. 

In 1 Corinthians, Paul speaks of final judgment day when Christ returns and all souls will be saved, the good and the bad.  Paul confirms that all souls  are created by God and given to man. Paul seems to intimate that all of God’s souls will return to Him.  He seems to say that the bodies of the righteous will return to  good souls for a reunion in Heaven but the unrighteous will be tested by fire and will be burned by eternal damnation. Only those who live by the Spirit of Christ will experience a resurrection as Christ did.

Don’t wonder if the world hates you.  It does.  One who hates his brother hates you and is of this world.  He that loves his brother keeps God’s commands.  If you keep God’s commands you do not sin.  If you do not keep His commands, you sin and are of the devil. The world brings death, doing the work of Him by keeping His commands brings life.  The commandments require you to love your brother and not just in words but in deeds, to the extent that you would lay down your own life for your brother.  Would you give your life for your brother in need?  In other words, if your life could save the life of your brother, would you accept death to save the life of your brother? You might trade your death for the life of your sick child or mother or father.  But would you accept your own death to save the life of a sick friend or even a stranger?  God requires us to love to that extreme.  But He does not require us to love our brother who is of this world to that extreme.  In other words, if our brother violates God’s commands, lives in sin and thus of the devil, we are not required to lay down our life for such person. Or are we?

Christ told many parables.  He spoke in parables, I guess, so that we humans could understand his message.  We all know about the parable of the sower of seeds.  The seeds are the word of God and depending on the man who receives them, the yield can be fruitful.  Then Christ describes the Kingdom of God.  We are presently living in the Kingdom of God on this earth right now.  Christ is the landowner. The landowner sows good wheat seed but while he slept, an enemy came and sowed weeds in the landowner’s crop.  When both the weed and wheat matured, the workers wanted to remove the weeds before harvest, but the landowner said wait till harvest time because weeding the field in the growing season would disturb the wheat.  At harvest the weeds will be pulled first and burned then the wheat will be harvested and taken into the barn.

The field in this parable is the world in which we currently live.  The enemy, the evil one, sows weeds into the world, lost individuals who spew nothing but vile in their sphere of influence.  We the workers, are currently living amongst evil people, representatives of the devil.  Just as the Lord said that there will always be poor people among us, so will there always be evil people among us.  The Kingdom will not be rid of the evil until harvest time, the second coming of Christ.  Christ, at harvest time, will separate the wheat from the weeds.  The weeds will burn in Hell and the wheat will be stored in Heaven. Are you wheat or weed?